Ampihoarana: Day 2

First of all, while writing this in my flimsy cahier, using what’s left of the daylight, I am surrounded by three children who are avidly peering over my shoulder at a language they’re never seen. At the vest least, that can tell you a little of what this experience has been like.

To say vasha are treated like celebrities would be a bit of an understatement. Let me attempt to describe my experience on day two, which I’ve titled in my head “The day of the six kilometer walk.”

Day two begins at 5:30 AM, but I don’t actually leave my bed until 7:20. Let’s just say is took me about two hours to become mentally prepared for the daily French/Malagasy language and the acceptance of doing nothing for long periods of time.

By the time I am dressed, there is a shoeless man in our house asking me if I’m ready for “the promenade.” This is when I learn that I’m setting off to another village on foot, that’s about three kilometers away, with this mystery shoeless man and two unknown Malagasy people. Well alrighty then.

This mysterious man is best described as the epitome of business casual. He’s sporting a crisp, clean, white striped button down (how does he keep that so white?), some classy brown pleated pants, rolled at bottoms and no shoes. But somehow, it really works for him. He reminds me of a Malagasy version of Ben from Lost.

We set off on a walk towards a town whose name I was unable to retain, even though they said it at least 10 times. That’s just how the majority of this language is for me. It doesn’t stick.

The walk itself wasn’t all that eventful. It took about an hour. We walked through a river. I stressed about getting a water-borne disease. No big deal.

We finally arrive. I slowly meet everyone in town. Beginning of the celebrity-esque experience: People start following me after I say hello to me. After a couple minutes, I have a small crowd behind me. It feels a little bit like that ending scene in Love Actually where everyone’s following Colin Firth’s character as he goes to propose to that Porteguese girl, except everyone’s following the vasha to laugh and try to talk to her in Malagasy.

I realize we’re in the village to weight babies as an anti-malnutrition thing. I’m not going to describe that because it literally took six hours and was brutal to endure, but I will tell you that I can say with confidence: Malagasy babies DO NOT enjoy being weighed. That’s all you need to know.

Let’s skip to the part where I visited a school of children who were having recess.

1. Start with the mental image of a normal school yard. Kids playing, kickball, hopscotch, the works.

2. Now add a strange alien to the mix. As soon as it passes a group of children, they literally drop anything they’re doing and follow it, but give it two feet of space. From above this would resemble tiny fish that swim around a shark, but never close enough to touch it, constantly morphing into a different shape.

3. Now you’re the alien (duh, if you didn’t see where this was going). There’s 80 children in a circle around you, staring expectantly. No one speaks French. What do you do?

“How I became the ‘Duna Kely’ Pianache”

So I’m standing in that exact position thinking about what to do when I remember the last thing Laiz said before I left. He said “Duna Kely” and gave me a fist bump. So I figured, why not? I stick my fist out, all the children flinch at the motion, and I say “Duna Kely!” For a moment there’s silence and then a small girl in the front of the circle sticks her fist out and bumps me back, shouting “Duna Kely!” Then, as if my alien space bubble instantly popped, all 79 of the other students crashed into the circle with their fists raised in the air, screaming “Duna Kely!” It was actually complete chaos. But, I fist bumped all 80 of them.

And then the chaos had settled and I was alone in the center again, looking at 160 expectant eyes. So I ran to Malagasy knowledge reservoir and remembered the only song I had learned in the language and began to sing. Again there was a long moment of silence as I was singing “Ny Mandeha” by myself, but then, all 80 joined in, screaming and laughing at the fact that I knew the song. We sang five verses and I finished by giving a thumbs up and shouted “Tsara Be!” (very good!) which was followed by 80 thumbs in the air and insanely loud cheering. It was absolutely surreal.

By the time I got back to the village, I overheard a bunch of conversations talking about the “vasha, duna kely, pianche” (white foreigner, fist bumping, student) which was really funny. This has been one of the highlights of the trip.

The rest of the day was spent eating rice with the important men in the village, admitting to myself that I’ve become a germ-a-phobe, and becoming nauseated by the presence of flies and watching every baby in the village get weighed. (And trust me, the irony of eating only rice and pasta noodles for lunch with people who were distributing books that emphasized eating varied meals that contained more than starch was not lost on me.)

We finally start walking back. It pours. It’s windy. We walk through the river again. Yada, yada, yada. And that’s day two.